Country Lead, South Africa

The Country Lead will lead the delivery of EOF’s ECCE outcomes fund in South Africa, providing strategic guidance to ensure its successful implementation and influencing local donors, government and partner stakeholders to support EOF objectives. They will represent EOF nationally and lead the programs’ implementation, stakeholder engagement, and sustainability planning.

Responsibilities

• Lead EOF’s partnership and stakeholder engagement with government, donors, implementing partners and other programme partners in South Africa and beyond, furthering program goals and identifying new opportunities to expand impact.
• Prepare for and facilitate formal governance meetings with government partners, evaluators, donors, and implementing partners.
• Facilitate technical, planning and capacity-strengthening workshops for government and implementing partners on governance, evaluation design, implementation, and sustainability.
• Secure government and donor partner commitment to implement and sustain policy change as a result of evidence from the OBF program or to generate new outcomes focused on opportunities and approaches.
• Overall responsible for overseeing the programme’s implementation.
• Oversee programme evaluation, working closely with the evaluation firm.
• Build influential relationships with government to ensure understanding of OBF and that government decision-making is informed by EOF advice.
• Build strong implementing partner, investor and donor relationships to further interest in outcomes-based approaches beyond the lifetime of the program.
• Maintain EOF’s Safeguarding standards throughout programme implementation.
• Coordinate and conduct site visits to programme locations to validate progress, observe implementation, and engage local stakeholders.
• Produce end-of-year reports to analyse the programme’s implementation, including successes and challenges, visibility within government, evaluation of results, and progress towards outcome targets.
• Oversee program budget and produce financial reports, with support of an embedded operations team.
• Lead sustainability planning for the programme including developing a long-term sustainability theory of change and action plan.
• Build understanding of Ministry priorities to ensure learning agenda resources are well aligned and create reciprocal government action on sustainability plans.
• Steer EOF’s strategic positioning, visibility, and advocacy in South Africa.
• Lead advocacy efforts to amplify programme learnings and results across platforms.
• Lead EOF’s team in South Africa, building and managing the team effectively to ensure their successful operation.

Requirements

• A first-level, Bachelor’s degree in Education, International Development, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Project Management, or a related field.
• A minimum of 9 years of relevant professional experience combined with a Bachelors degree, or 7 years with a Master’s degree.
• Experience leading programmes in South Africa, ideally in the education/ECCE sector.
• Direct experience working with the Government of South Africa.
• Experience leading a team and managing multiple stakeholders across projects.
• Desired: Masters degree in Education, International Development, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Project Management, or a related field.
• Desired: Prior experience working with donors and international organisations in the education (or related) sector in South Africa.
• Desired: Experience with results-/outcomes-based financing, innovative finance or innovative delivery models, and/or large donor-funded initiatives.
• Desired: Experience in evaluation design and/or management.

Skills

• Programme Leadership
• Stakeholder Management
• Team Leadership
• Government Relations
• Education Sector Expertise
• Early Childhood Care and Development
• Project Management
• Donor Engagement Strategies
• International Development
• Results-Based Finance
• Innovative Financing
• Evaluation Design
• Evaluation Management
• Strategic Planning
• Outcomes Fund Management

Languages

English